


Nightmare Drabbles

by Brickmaster_Guy



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Drabble, Nightmares, No Romance, Walking, kind of a useless story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 03:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17236835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brickmaster_Guy/pseuds/Brickmaster_Guy
Summary: Mostly some better attempts at representing the characters and telling a (very) short story. Mae has a nightmare and goes on a walk to clear her mind. Germ is there.





	Nightmare Drabbles

**Author's Note:**

> Shit. It's, uh, literally the last day in 2018? It's been a looong time since I updated literally anything on here. This is mostly due to the fact that, as an immense bit or writer's block, haven't been able to create jack. Apologies. Especially to those who read and anticipate more of my Oxenfree fanfic. I'm like, moostly sure I'll get around to writing more of that eventually. (I have a good portion of a chapter finished!) But, yeah this story isn't exactly much. Like I said almost like, a year, maybe two, ago, I'm no good at writing fluff. So, to have some mindless drabbles, I use some hearty servings of angst instead. But yeah, this story is just an attempt to one, get back into the groove of writing NITW stuff (or at least something) again, and two, to try to characterize Mae and Germ better. Looking back at my last few NITW stories, I feel as if most characters, but especially Mae and Germ, were characterized poorly. So, to try to get a little better at that, as well as to write something with my main man Germ in it (nudge nudge, look at my icon made by dongoverlord), I made this. It's supremely late and isn't really great or very dense, but I feel that this might be worth reading to some people, so to you all, here you go: crap. Anyway, since it's literally been so long, happy belated Valentine's day, St. Patrick's day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and most other holidays, and a perfectly on-schedule New Year's eve! Hope to write some more stuff before a year passes!

Hard to breathe. Something made her heart race. The ghost of a sound rang in her ears. Something hard and cold against her chest. Someone had just said her name. Blood rushed back through her ankle, a grasp finally released. Something was echoing. It was her laughter. Something was funny? Clearly not. She was crying now. She was so tired. Everything was so tiring.

Casey was dead. Here he lied. Mae was almost next. Here she lied. She felt like there was more death even still. She opened her eyes. It was dark. Darker than anything she'd seen before. Darker still. Her friends were among her. Her memories came back to her as she dried her face with her sleeve. Her life had just been saved by her friends. Her friends. There was a gasp behind her and a thud. Shuffling and shouting ahead. Her ankle was grabbed, still warm from the firm hold that was just on it. Familiarly warm, hand pulled her back. Helplessly, she reached out to grab anything, but it was fruitless. Now she was falling. With the grasp of a vengeful ghost and the clear sensation of falling, she was back in the elevator shaft. Falling down, clearly to die. Here she'd lie, reunited with a past friend and perhaps current ones, too.

But now she'd landed on something soft. Comfortable even. She was sat upright. It was her room. Mae was awake, and the moonlight from the window faintly lit it up. Mae looked around. Her room was still here, as was she. She was alive. She propped her arms up on her legs, her eyes dug into the heel of her hand. This wasn't the first nightmare she'd had gotten from the mines, and it most likely wouldn't be the last, but that was one of the worst, at least in a while. She could still feel like she was falling into oblivion. She shifted her legs, pulling her feet together. Mae ground her eyes into her hands, lighting her blackened vision with random colors, and then she pulled away. She threw the covers off of her and stood up with a stretch. Wow, she was apparently really warm; the air around her instantly cooled her down. But all in all, Mae just felt gross— sticky, clammy, generally uncomfortable, and certainly tired. Some fresh air could help with that.

Having donned her boots and double checking that she, indeed, was dressed, she carefully made her way down the stairs so as not to wake up her parents. Mae exited through the front door and instantly felt much nicer. The air was cool and crisp, and the moonlight seemed inherently pleasant to be under. A chilly wind blew through the empty streets, rustling some leaves. The few streetlights that there were and the moonlight blended into a comfortable soft yellow and white that illuminated the road and sidewalk. Mae sighed and decided to take a short walk around the neighborhood and try to get back to bed.

Surely, the mine incident wasn’t a normal thing. Most people in this town didn’t and wouldn’t have to deal with that. Most college dropouts wouldn’t. Most people wouldn’t. But, as those things go, Mae did. She wasn’t special, not as far as Mae saw it, yet the universe thrust her into an inherently special kind of thing. Into a bad kind of thing. Bad didn’t cover it though, did it? It was still beyond words for Mae. Sure, she could say it was bad, terrible, perhaps even traumatizing, but was that enough? Were those words impactful enough? Or even still, the thought that crept into her mind every now and then, maybe this was all just an overreaction. Perhaps this wasn’t truly traumatizing, or that terrible a thing, and Mae was just horribly overreacting. Who was truly to say? Not Mae. Mae personally just wanted to ignore that the mine ever collapsed or that a friend of hers was ever there, but here she was, obsessively reminding herself of and overanalyzing the things she didn’t want to. Mae stumbled over a bit of uneven pavement. She took a slow breath before exhaling at the same speed. She was thinking too much.

She tried to just run through things in order. She came back to town. Crap happened and she, during Harfest, saw a kidnapping she thought was a ghost. She tried to find the ghost and led her and her friends to a cult meeting in the mine. They learned Casey was dead there and tried to leave, before it collapsed and they escaped. Simple. Simple? That couldn’t be further from the truth. Her mind just couldn’t wrap itself around what happened and how to feel about it. There was too much that happened and too extreme a result to completely feel right about it. She was already at the end of her neighborhood and clearly wasn’t any closer to feeling alright enough to sleep. On the plus side, she’d completely woken herself up and probably wasn’t gonna be able to get much sleep. Then without much warning, her name was called out from nearly right behind her.

Quickly Mae turned to see who was behind her, and to her surprise, the beak of a familiar Germ was mere centimeters from her face. Clear as day, despite it being night, there was the laid back, sometimes socially deficient bird she’d come to kind of know.

“Germ!” Mae replied, louder than she’d have liked for the middle of the night, “What’re you doing?”

“Walking,” Germ said, his hands not leaving his pockets.

“I meant like, right behind me, at, like, midnight?”

“Walking,”

Mae gave a kind of awkward, nervous smile and added, “Sure, alright. Why’re you out walking?”

“Wanted to see the stars, couldn’t sleep.”

“I couldn’t sleep either.”

“Weird, we both can’t sleep at the same time.”

“Yeah,” Mae paused, unsure of how to disengage or continue the conversation with Germ.

“Wanna talk?”

“Sure,” Mae replied, thankful that Germ would take a leap of faith out into awkwardness, seeing as he barely knew, or cared, that there was a leap in the first place.

Mae and Germ walked side by side down the sidewalk, continuing in Mae’s original direction. It was only so often that the two hung out, and uncommon for them to talk with just the two of them, as they did now. Mae appreciated the fresh breath of air that Germ was, giving forth such different responses, questions, and talking points than most other people. Mae could assume that Germ appreciated their conversation as well, but that was just about as far as she could get there.

“So how’s life and all?” Mae asked, trying to spark the conversation.

“Saw vultures outside my backyard the other day.”

“Didya see what they were going after?”

“Probably dead deer.”

“Probably.”

The air was still for a moment as Mae and Germ continued walking. “What did you actually end up doing with that well we came out of a while ago?” Mae asked.

“The one you asked me to blow up?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Blew it up.”

“You did?”

“Almost collapsed my backyard.”

“...Thanks.”

“What were y’all doin’ in my well?”

“Whaddya know already?” Part of Mae wanted to go on a rant about her thoughts and recount what happened, while another part desperately prayed that Gregg had perhaps done the job for her already.

“Not much. Somethin’ with those mines.” Germ paused, “You think there’s still coal in there?”

“Probably not much.” Mae sighed, “We met a cult in there.”

“Geez, like sacrifices and stuff?”

“Yeah, that’s how...” Mae stopped herself, “Yeah, they sacrificed people.”

Germ looked over at Mae, who looked rather despaired. Unsure of necessarily what to say or do to make Mae feel better, he did the best he could. “Well, y’all’re still alive, and that’s alright

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s just, all so sad.”

“Well, ‘s over now, right?”

“Yeah, I don’t have to worry about it, really.”

  
“Then don’t.”

“...The mines were destroyed?”

“I blew them all up.”

“Thanks, Germ.”

They continued walking in silence for another few moments, but already were coming upon the Food Donkey, and Germ let Mae know that he was going to head back towards his house. Mae and Germ exchanged goodbyes and went their separate ways with a quick wave. Mae let her mind relax and took in the beautiful nighttime scenery instead of fretting. While Germ’s advice was simple and wouldn’t seem to much, the truth was that just having here friend reassure her was enough to put her mind at ease. She’d have to repay the favor at some point, if Germ gave her a chance to. But as of now, she simply took in the night sky and made her way back home. Her short journey had come to a conclusion and she’d gotten herself to calm down enough to try to sleep again. The peaceful, uncomplicated nature she’d seen and the kind assurance of Germ kept her anxiety at bay as she eventually fell back asleep.


End file.
